What was needed was the creation of the “sober, industrious, and thrifty” worker who rejected “riotous living,” “the display of enervating luxury,” and “the insane attempt to keep up appearances which are not legitimate.”

Hunt's bold innovation is to bring that "black dog" to furry life as an insistent, insidious and enervating presence, sometimes known as Black Pat and sometimes - taking the name of Churchill's home - as Mr. Chartwell.

A series of enervating campus visits is marked by interchangeably chirpy undergraduate tour guides united by their ability to walk backward while extolling the school's a capella groups and reassuring parents about the high priority placed on security.

When I first wrote about the link between career success and emotional conflict in Modern Madness a couple of decades ago, I found that the main conflicts people typically experienced were enervating trade-offs and feelings of self-betrayal -- especially around personal values and ideals that clashed with the behavior and attitudes necessary for career advancement.